BYD revealed more information on the BYD Han EV, which will reach the Chinese market in June 2020. The BYD Han is available in an All-Wheel Drive and Single Motor version. The AWD has a max range of 550km on the NEDC testing cycle. The FWD version is available in a short-range with 506km and a long-range with 605km.

The BYD Han is the first model to showcase the company's new Blade Battery and DiPilot advance driving assist system. It is also the first series where the plug-in hybrid and pure electric have different designs of the front. Both the Han EV and the Han DM (PHEV) uses BYDs Dragon Face design style, but the Han EV uses a semi-closed front face design to identify its pure electric identity. The overall design of the Han series follows a streamlined "front and rear" design concept with a low resistance coefficient of 0.233Cd for improved efficiency. BYD aims to create a taste of luxury to compete with the XPENG P7 and Tesla Model S. The Han is also the first BYD with hidden door handles. The instrument adopts a full LCD instrument panel with a brand new UI design and improved visual effect. The infotainment system used in the Han series is BYDs DiLink 3.0 system, developed with the Android operating system.

The Han EV is the first electrified model to use the new Blade Battery architecture, which, combined with lithium iron phosphate, enables BYD to control the battery cost while improving energy density. The Blade battery architecture uses a Cell To Pack (CTP) technology, where the battery cell is directly integrated into the battery pack, eliminating the need for intermediate modules, as opposed to the traditional battery packs, which uses a single-module-battery grouping of packages. Apart from a cost saving of 30%+ and an improved life cycle of 1.2M km, the Blade Battery architecture also offers improved safety.

The patent images of the Blade battery disclosed by BYD shows thinner and extra-long prismatic cells of 430mm to 2500mm. Compared with the traditional square battery, it presents "flat" and "long" shapes, cells in the Blade Battery are arranged together in an array and inserted into the battery pack like a "blade". By utilizing the CTP design, the BYD Blade battery uses fewer components such as side plates, end plates, fasteners, beams, and longitudinal beams of each module, ultimately improving the energy density per unit mass to 180Wh/kg. The result of the savings and design is an improved space utilization of around 50%, compared to a traditional NCM811 block battery. Furthermore, the CTP battery design increases the charge capacity by about 20% -30%, and the cruising range also increases by 20% -30%.

The Blade Battery offers four distinct safety features, such as slow heat release and low heat generation, a high starting temperature for exothermic reactions, while not releasing oxygen when damaged, or easily catch fire. The safety enhancements mean the Blade Battery has much lower surface temperatures when punctured of around 30 C to 60 C, compared to 500 C of traditional ternary batteries. BYD tweeted that in extreme condition testing where the battery was punctured, heated to 572 F, overcharged by 260%, crushed and bent, it did not catch fire.

BYD | Xpeng | Tesla